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I’ve basically finished McLaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus, I just have the apendices left and I rarely ever read those so I’m as good as done.

It was a thought provoking book, and I gotta say, not as controversial as I thought it would be. McLaren definetly paints a picture of Jesus that is compassionate, revolutionary, and on a mission. Which is where we should all be as his followers.

The last few chapters where about the Kingdom of God, and McLaren really tried to enforce the idea that the Kingdom of God is not just pie in the sky go to heaven when I die. Jesus told us that the Kingdom is at hand. We need to be working on building the kingdom of God here and now. Someday Jesus will usher in the completion of his kingdom, but that is not our concern, what are we doing today to make Heaven on Earth.

I was challenged at Elevate 06 this past year by something that Brandon Cameron said many times, Jesus lowered the standard of acceptance but raised the level of Commitment. And McLaren picks up on that to, when he was talking about Exlusivism and Inclusivism. This is definitely a hot issue today with the church falling on both sides, some excluding all “sinners”, others welcome everyone no matter what. These churches don’t talk about sin and personal responsibility because that would come across judgemental.

McLaren leads us another way that I found encouraging and challenging, he titled it “purposeful inclusion.” McLaren talks about how church that are divided over sin and such they fall apart, because they welcome people who don’t want to help sinners get out of sin, or they welcome sinners who don’t want to acknowledge their faults. And these churches begin to crumble.

Here are some quotes from this discussion:

The kingdom’s purpose is to gather, to include, to welcome everyone who is willing (children, prostitutes, tax collectors)into reconcilliation wiht God and one another — but if the kingdom included people who rejected this purpose, the kingdom “divided against itself,” would be ruined.

Citizens of the kingdom must indeed want to learn a new way of life, and if they don’t count and pay the full cost, they will remain outside.

So yeah welcome anyone to come into church, and let them know, the only way to come into the kingdom is to seek reconcilliation with God and each other, so you have to deal with sin, there is no way around it. This was quite interesting, and actually surprising to come from McLaren.

But at the same time the kingdom of God is open to religious people who may actually miss what Jesus is doing because they are too busy sticking to their rules. Religious leaders and Prostitues alike both need to be willing to commit to a new way of life, of reconciliation, of healing, of grace. Because really we are all jacked up people and Jesus is came to get us all into the revolution.

I also like the way McLaren talked about the Kingdom, we really have no context for kingdom thinking today because we don’t live under kings. But for Jesus to say things like the kingdom of God is at hand, he wasn’t just saying the nice little platitude that it has become today, he was inciting a revolution, and while it was intended to be a revolution of peace it was still a revolution. Jesus was basically saying, yeah Rome may be in charge today, but we serve a higher power than Rome. We may be under the heels of oppressors now, but someday our oppressors will receive justice. Jesus wasn’t a hippy who had an incredible medicare and food program, he was a revolutionary. And his followers literally risked everything to be associated with him. They were setting themselves up to be seen as traitors to Rome.

What can we say today that would encite that kind of passion about the Kingdom of God? What image can we cast about what the kingdom is really like? What can we say to give it the weight that it really deserves? Jesus calls us to be revolutionaries, not just pew warmers, not just republicans or democrats, not just pastors and lay people, not just doctors or bus drives, revolutionaries.

Well I finished McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy. I was please to read it and not feel angry or upset in anyway. That usually qualifies as a win in my book. There was some stuff that I didn’t fully agree with, and there were some things that I think we were really close on. All in all it was a good read and I would recommend it to people who like to think and be stretched a little.

This book is basically a story about how McLaren traveled through different traditions within Christianity and came to appreciate certain things and became concerned with others. Part of the reason that this orthodoxy is called Generous is because he tries to show how all these various traditions can compliment each other and that we as followers of Christ need to work to see that and not fight so much with people from traditions outside our own traditions.

I come from a Pentecostal tradition and McLaren went through a Pentecostal phase in his life. And I was actually surprised that he and I had a lot of the same concerns with typical Pentecostal thinking. One of the biggest things that Pentecostal theology creates is an insider/outsider mentality when it comes to spiritual gifts. If someone isn’t speaking in tongues then they are somehow less of a Christian. I know that is an extreme statement but it comes across from time to time. And this, I feel, alienates people who are on the “outside”. It can make them feel less important, less gifted, less usable by God, or just less. And I think that if the Pentecostal tradition is going to live and thrive in the future we will need to be willing to look at this inside/outside thinking and reevaluate what it is that we really want to say about speaking in tongues and spiritual gifts.

The other thing that he said about Charismatic Christians is that they, along with contemplatives, have a great understanding of joy. That really both paths lead to experiencing joy in profound ways. People don’t usually associate Charismatics with Contemplatives but ultimately these two paths should both lead to true and lasting and new joy.

Another really insightful thing that he said was in regards to the reformed tradition that the church should always be reforming. We should always be adapting to our culture. And this can be difficult to draw a definite line on because how far should we reform, what should we reform, those kinds of questions leave a lot of options and people can get confused and sometimes reform what should not change like the basic message of the Gospel, sexual boundaries, our state as sinful people before God. Those are all things, and there are probably many more, that should not be reformed. But we should be willing to reform our method, our vocabulary, our dress code, our music, all of that should be reformed with our culture so that we don’t come across as completely aloof and out of touch.

For instance, there are some things that are completely offensive to an older generation that if said in church would anger them, where as if that same statement were said in a younger context no one would even care. (I speak on this from experience). Who is right and who is wrong in that kind of situation? Both. But should both be willing to reform and try to communicate to the culture in the most practical and applicable way? Yes. So I guess it a give and take but it must always be moving gradually forward.

One of the things that was very clear in the book is that Christians should have compassion for lost people, but also for fellow Christians. I do agree with him that there are many things about our many traditions that we can embrace and celebrate. Because ultimately no one has it all figured out. We have been trying to for centuries and we still are not there. Some day we will be, but that’s gonna be in heaven, so in the mean time our orthodoxy can stand to be a little more Generous.